Fear can make you kind.

So, I could talk quite a lot about the museum field and the evolving attitudes that mean this is a really complicated issue, but right now, my main focus really is on saving these places, and I don’t particularly want to detract from that. Here is what I will say though.

The definition of “museums” that are threatened right now ranges from small local history centers, to science museums, to places that display art, oddities and more. There are museums of pop culture and museums dedicated to obscure historical events and hands-on experiential learning museums, planetariums and rocketry centers, and everything in-between. Only a fraction of these places have the kind of artifacts you’re talking about in the first place. Do they deserve to die because they’re part of a broader category? I certainly don’t think so, and I’d ask you to consider that question.

The other thing that is a little harder to explain but that I hope makes sense is this: if what you really care about is artifact repatriation, it’s actually even MORE important that even the museums you don’t like survive this crisis. There are important laws around returning artifacts (including some that basically say you have to return them -- it’s not all red tape), which is its own discussion but is good thing in a lot of ways, because it means there is a methodology to make sure that things end up in the right place. Some of the kinds of museums you’re talking about are already in the process of doing that with parts of their collections. The museum I was working for prior to all this has a working relationship with our local Native tribes, communicating with them about returning certain things and about the most respectful way to display -- or in some places, not display -- the things in their collection that they either haven’t been able to return yet or have been told they could hang onto, since some of these groups have said they would like those things to be displayed, alongside donated, modern works of art, in order to educate people about their cultures. If these sorts of places make it through and can continue the work that they’ve been doing, I can 100% promise that more art and artifacts will make their way into the hands of Native tribes. However, if they have to close suddenly, that won’t happen. Because of all the laws and regulations to make sure things end up in the right places, if these museums can no longer afford to pay their staff, there won’t be anyone left to do the necessary work to get those things back into the hands of their original owners. And if hundreds of museums close across the country, there also won’t be enough other collections left to accept those artifacts and continue their work. What you would most likely see happen is the absolute worst case scenario -- private collectors snatching up things that don’t belong to them and making them inaccessible to the people they should be going back to.

They knew they were being badly exploited—that the garments they were making were being sold for more than they would make in a month. One 17-year-old said to me: “We make computers, but we don’t know how to use them.”

So one thing I found slightly jarring was that some of these same workers wore clothing festooned with knockoff trademarks of the very multinationals that were responsible for these conditions: Disney characters or Nike check marks. At one point, I asked a local labor organizer about this. Wasn’t it strange—a contradiction?

It took a very long time for him to understand the question. When he finally did, he looked at me like I was nuts. You see, for him and his colleagues, individual consumption wasn’t considered to be in the realm of politics at all. Power rested not in what you did as one person, but what you did as many people, as one part of a large, organized, and focused movement. For him, this meant organizing workers to go on strike for better conditions, and eventually it meant winning the right to unionize. What you ate for lunch or happened to be wearing was of absolutely no concern whatsoever.

This was striking to me, because it was the mirror opposite of my culture back home in Canada. Where I came from, you expressed your political beliefs—firstly and very often lastly—through personal lifestyle choices. By loudly proclaiming your vegetarianism. By shopping fair trade and local and boycotting big, evil brands.

These very different understandings of social change came up again and again a couple of years later, once my book came out. I would give talks about the need for international protections for the right to unionize. About the need to change our global trading system so it didn’t encourage a race to the bottom. And yet at the end of those talks, the first question from the audience was: “What kind of sneakers are OK to buy?” “What brands are ethical?” “Where do you buy your clothes?” “What can I do, as an individual, to change the world?”

Fifteen years after I published No Logo, I still find myself facing very similar questions. These days, I give talks about how the same economic model that superpowered multinationals to seek out cheap labor in Indonesia and China also supercharged global greenhouse-gas emissions. And, invariably, the hand goes up: “Tell me what I can do as an individual.” Or maybe “as a business owner.”

The hard truth is that the answer to the question “What can I, as an individual, do to stop climate change?” is: nothing. You can’t do anything. In fact, the very idea that we—as atomized individuals, even lots of atomized individuals—could play a significant part in stabilizing the planet’s climate system, or changing the global economy, is objectively nuts. We can only meet this tremendous challenge together. As part of a massive and organized global movement.

The irony is that people with relatively little power tend to understand this far better than those with a great deal more power. The workers I met in Indonesia and the Philippines knew all too well that governments and corporations did not value their voice or even their lives as individuals. And because of this, they were driven to act not only together, but to act on a rather large political canvas. To try to change the policies in factories that employ thousands of workers, or in export zones that employ tens of thousands. Or the labor laws in an entire country of millions. Their sense of individual powerlessness pushed them to be politically ambitious, to demand structural changes.

In contrast, here in wealthy countries, we are told how powerful we are as individuals all the time. As consumers. Even individual activists. And the result is that, despite our power and privilege, we often end up acting on canvases that are unnecessarily small—the canvas of our own lifestyle, or maybe our neighborhood or town. Meanwhile, we abandon the structural changes—the policy and legal work— to others.”

ask instead what your country has done to you

Ron: My uncle, my actual blood family member uncle who I knew, clearly cared bout and am named after, saw a magical creature that is said to cause death and died one day later. Cause of death not specified. Could have been natural causes. Could have been hit by a freaking bus for all you know. 

Peter: thank you, but I can’t

Bartender: why not

Peter:

Bartender:

This will be false.

Leaving Healthcare up to the market literally can only increase disease rates among the poor. Capitalist Accumulation cannot outpace herd immunity.

"The dishes were only bland soups and maybe some moldy bread"

I'm studying English language and literature, not History, but like... Pork vs Pig... Deer vs Venison... Cow vs Beef... May give you the idea THEY FUCKING ATE MEAT AT LEAST GODDAMIT

And not even like we do

Where's the feast with venison? The ridiculous amount of salmon and other fishes? The little gardens full of spices? Or the trade of exotic foods? Slaughtering season was celebrated in some places not that much ago (like... I saw one when little), why not portray one?

And more importantly

WHERE'S THE CHICKEN WITH HELMET???

Medieval people loved their spices; The Forme of Cury has a lot of flavours I'd associate more with Indian food than anything else. Even if you weren't a wealthy seasoning-loving king like Richard II, you could still have garlic, onions, and herbs.

Here's a link with more info. Apparently the dish is called Singing Chicken... But that's a chicken with a helmet

that clearly showed the people of the time valued color, had style, and only occasionally made horses look like a dog made out of play-doh. even people who didnt live in a castle still had access to paint to liven up the plaster walls of their homes, brightly dyed fabrics and flowers were as available to them as and they sang, constantly. what we assume was a life of toiling in the mud from dusk till dawn the whole year was typically a relaxed paced life of 10 hour a night sleep in a comfortable bed where work didnt start untill you had your flagon of ale and a song with your buddies as you walked to the field, you sang as you worked, took three ale breaks from work while singing, and then you sang as you walked to the tavern so you could sing while you played nine mens morris or cheated at mancala because you thought the miller was too soused to notice. we barely know any of the songs they sang and humanity is less for it, a scant handfull of them do remain and its just beautiful to hear what a table of tavern patrons would break into song about to prove they werent too drunk for another round song and story were all day every day, theres a reason the most well known middle english text was canterbury tales- whose narrative was that a selection of travelers on the way to the same location had an ongoing bar-bet about who could tell the better story, asking bartenders to judge the complexity of these stories, all of which were absolutely valid as just shit you would say to another drunk in a tavern, would give modern soap operas a swift kick in the pants and its sad that it takes a historian to tell you just how crass and lowbrow humor they were on a similar vein to how so many people somehow forgot that shakespear was lowbrow humor for the commoner and not somehow too sophisticated for rubes it wasnt just bards who would own an instrument, instruments are wood, leather, string, bone/horn, or even clay... those are all commonly available and affordable if not straight up FREE items to someone in the medieval world so a hefty chunk of the population would have an instrument and know how to use it, anything from a wood flute to a simple drum to an ocarina. many designs were even specifically for travel so you could always have it at the ready